Abrasive wire rope.



G. M. S'ELBY.

ABRASIVE W|RE HOPE.' APPLICATION FILED JUNE 18.1913.

1,306,636; v Pa-tentedJune 10,1919.

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GEORGE MAY SELBY, OF MILLWALL, LONDON, ENGLAND.

ABRASIVE WIRE Born.

Specification of Letters Patent,

f Patented June 10, v1919.

Application filed'J'une 18, 1918. .Serial No.24 ose'o.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, GEORGE MAY SELBY, a subject of the King of GreatBritain, residing at West Ferry road, Millwall, in the county of London,England, have invented new and useful Improved Abrasive Wire Ropes, ofwhich the following is a specification.

This invention has for its object to provide improved wire rope of thekind for cut ting, 0r weakening, other ropes, and for analogous cutting,tearing, or weakening, operations wherein cutting wires are employedwith the ordinary wires of the cable.

According to this invention there is combined, with a strand, or withthe strands of the rope, additional wires. twisted, or

' stranded, together in a direction the reverse of the direction oftwisting or stranding of the ordinary wires of th strand, or strands; towhich they are applied, the said additional wires being of metal hardenough to cut, or tear, or sufiiciently abrade, and coiled around, orincorporated with, the other wires of one, or more than one, of thestrands, of the rope in such manner, that the said additional wires,will exert a'cutting, tearing, or weakening, action when the rope withwhich they are combined is drawn across, or otherwise moved in contactwith, the object to be-cut, torn, or weakened.

The accompanying drawing represents in Figure l a strand for a rope inaccordance with this invention and Fig. 2 shows a rope in which such astrand is combined.

The improved rope may, for instance, be made by stranding, or twisting,together two additional wires of the aforesaid character, as illustratedat a, b, in the accompanying drawing, and coiling such twisted, orstranded, additional wires (1, 1), around the ordinary wires 0, of astrand for the rope, the said additional wires a, b, projecting somewhatfrom the general run of the rope with which the strand to which they areapplied is incorporated. Fig. 1 represents such a strand and Fig. 2represents a rope made of several strands one of which is a strand withadditional wires applied to it, as shown in Fig. 1, while the otherstrands are ordinary strands of wires 0, although any number of thestrands may be like the strand shown in Fig. 1. It will be noted thatthe abrasive twists a and b are laid in the strand 0 and the latter solaid in the rope that the portions of the twists a and b exposed on theouter surface of the rope, extendina direction substantially parallelwith the axis of the rope.

The additional wires incorporated with the rope in accordance with thisinvention as aforesaid may be'of any suitable shape to effect thedesired cuttingaction.

The two, or more, additional wires a b, which are twisted, or stranded,together, and applied to a strand as in Fig. 1, for the purposes of thisinvention, are twisted, or stranded, in a direction opposite to that inwhich the ordinary wires 0 of the strands of the rope and the wires a,b,- are twisted, or stranded together. The wires may be made of. anyquality of metal suitable for the purpose, for example, the wires a, b,may be made of hawser quality steel and the wires 3 may be made of whatis known as plow steel but I do not limit myself to these particularqualities of metal.

In operation, a rope such as shown 1n F1g. 2, and comprlsing one or morestrands in which the abrasive cords are incorporated,

is drawn with a cutting or ab'rading action across the object which itis desired to sever. The present rope is particularly effective forcutting metal chains or cables, and may be used to advantage whensubmerged for cutting anchor chains or cables and the like for vesselsor submerged mines, etc. In such case the opposite ends of the abrasiverope could, for example, be carried by a air of mine sweepers travelingon the sur ace of the water and dragging a submerged length of the ropeacross an anchor chain or cable to be cut. What I claim is 1. A ropestrand comprising a plurality of slivers twisted in one direction, andan abrasive cord incorporated in the surface of the strand andprojecting slightly beyond the surface of the latter, said abrasive cordcomprising slivers twisted together in a direction opposite to the twistof the strand slivers, and being laid in the strand in accordance withthe twist of the latter.

2. In a construction such as specified in claim 1, a plurality ofabrasive cords laid in the surface of the strand at spaced intervals.

3. In a rope comprising a plurality of strands, certain of said strandsbeing formed of plain twisted slivers, and certain other of said strandscovering a construction such as specified in claim 1. p

4. A rope comprising a plurality of strands, certain of said strandsbeing formed of slivers twisted together and an abrasive.

cord incorporated in the strand and projecting slightly beyond thesurface thereof, the lay of said abrasive cord in the strand and the layof the strand in th rope being such that the portions of the abrasivecord ex- 'posed at the surface of the rope extend in a directionsubstantially parallel to the axis of the rope.

5. A rope comprising a, plurality of strands twisted together, certainof said strands comprising slivers and an abrasive cord twisted togetherin One direction, the

slivers of the abrasive cord being twisted in the-opposite direction,and the lay of 15 the abrasive cord in its strand and the lay ofthestrand in the rope beingisuehthat the portions of the abrasive cordexposed at the surfaceof the rope extend in a (lirection substantiallyparallelto 'the axis-of 20

